The Cleveland International Film Festival was impressive. Granted COVID Dystopia didn’t win any awards, but it was an honor just to get to show it there.
There were some amazing shorts in the After Hours Short Film block that COVID Dystopia was shown in. Bounce House by Callie Bloem and Christopher J. Ewing won the award for the best After Hours Short. It featured a post apocalyptic world with giant sloths and of course a bounce house.
I think my favorite was The Looming by Marsha Ko. It features a stellar actor who is truly haggard in his look. He lives alone and occasionally talks to his Alexa device. Alexa failed several times in different horror films, usually turning off the lights when the character desperately needs the light on. I can identify since I now live alone and occasionally open the front door just to listen to the security system say, “Front door open.” She isn’t a great conversationalist but its what I got.
There was a talk back after the screening and I was surprised that there were a bunch of questions about COVID Dystopia. I of course talked about the beginning of the project in March of 2020 when I started doing a painting a day about the pandemic.
One woman wanted to know if there would be a longer form of the project. My answer to her was that the long form project would be a book which I felt no one actually would want to see but I feel it needs to to be made for people 100 years from now. She raised her hand and said she would certainly get a copy. Now that I have a potential sale, it is time to create the book.
Someone else asked about the music and I got to promote Andy Matchett and the Post Apocalyptic Rock musical, Key of E. I couldn’t believe that the mic kept being handed off to me. I got flummoxed by a multi point question but think I answered it in the end. While COVID Dystopia was being shown a large group of people in the row in front of me started waving in friends. By the time they were all settled the film was over. Perhaps COVID Dystopia presents too much too fast. Next time around I need to make something with a straight forward narrative structure.
While doing the sketch above of the Allen Lobby, I had to swing my filmmaker lanyard behind my back since it got in the way of my sketching. As I was finishing up, an usher walked up behind me and asked if I wanted my lanyard scanned. It turned out a long line had formed all around me, and the audience were about to go into a screening. I asked what film was being shown and one of the ushers laughed. The film was, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person. The title probably sounds better in French. It sounded good to me, so I went in. I sat way in the back of the theater, away from the crush of the crowd. As the lights went out, my glasses fell to the floor. I got on my hands and knees to find them using the faint light from my iPhone but with no luck. I sat through the whole film wondering where the glasses could be. Reading the captions was a challenge but the message of the film was not lost on me. I loved it. At the end of the film, when the lights came back up, I found my glasses which had bounced one seat over. I later saw the vampire actress walking in the lobby. I couldn’t help but stare, her porcelain face was as white and frail as in the movie. If only I knew French.
At the Shorts Jury Awards and the Shorts Audience Choice Awards, I got to see all the winning films. The winner for best animation was Anita Lost in the News, a film about a failed emigration of a family out of Iraq. It seemed to be stop motion animation with the family being created out of newspaper clippings. I don’t think there were many animated films. All the films I saw in the tow days I was at the Film Festival were live action documentaries or narrative films.